Tag: FemTech

  • Farewell Ovulation – Going Back on the Pill #Periodically 19

    Farewell Ovulation – Going Back on the Pill #Periodically 19

    In news that was both disappointing and not at all unsurprising, my new doctor and I recently agreed that I will be going back on the pill. I’ve known for some time that the pill was likely to be the quickest source of relief for my dysmenorrhea (painful periods), menorrhagia (heavy periods), dyspareunia (painful sexual intercourse) and general pelvic pain, but it was an outcome I wanted to avoid given my experience with the pill in the past. For details read A Tale of Two Pills and #Periodically 13.

    The decision, in the end, wasn’t nearly as hard as I thought it would be. The quickest way for me to get some relief at the moment is to stop ovulating, and the combined pill does just that. Getting the prescription was thought-provoking though:

    Having been on Rigevidon (combined) and Cerelle (mini) in the past my main qualm was that I wanted to try a different dosage or brand this time. Now, because of the sad old state of our NHS, my gynaecology appointment was outsourced privately, so when the doc said I could go on Microgynon I nearly fell off my chair. Microgynon is technically the same as Rigevidon, it’s made up of a synthetic oestrogen and a synthetic progesterone that you take 21 days in a row and then you have a withdrawal bleed for a week – standard pill talk. BUT, Microgynon is the pill many my friends and sisters started on, had no problems with but were unexpectedly taken off of. Many of them have been switched to Rigevidon for no apparent reason. Maybe it’s paranoia but I am very suspicious that Rigevidon is simply cheaper than Microgynon.

    The gynae gave me a two month prescription of Microgynon but it was a private prescription. The doctor recommended I take it to my GP and ask them to refill it so I could get it free on the NHS, since it’s contraception. I am doing exactly this when my GP says, “I’m going to put you on something called Rigevidon, it’s basically the same thing” – I was furious. So I said, “no, it’s going to be Microgynon or nothing, that’s the only reason I agreed to go back on the pill. ” I was ready for a fight, but he quickly said, “OK” and printed out a prescription for six months of Microgynon. I was floored that it was so easy to get what I wanted, which only further makes me suspicious that the problem with Microgynon and Rigevidon is a price one – but, I should add, that is pure speculation (but still, #SaveOurNHS).

    So now I have the prescription the real drama starts. Over two and a half years ago I decided to come off the pill for several reasons. They were mostly because I had ended a relationship and wasn’t looking to get giggy with it, I wanted to try and get my sex drive back and to also get my mind back to something I recognised. I got so much more than I bargained for coming off the pill, good and bad. I got a new lease of life and creativity, my boobs dropped two cup sizes (to my delight), the world literally smelt different, I rediscovered my libido and I started having periods again. But equally, my periods were more painful than I remembered them being before, my skin got worse, I started spending money on sanitary products again and I discovered PMS. At that point in time, the pros outweighed the cons. The psychological benefits I felt coming off the pill were huge, and being able to track all these changes on Clue meant I could exploit them.

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    All good things come to an end however, and the last year has offered fresh pre, peri and post menstrual and ovulation symptoms and complications. As I’ve mentioned (a lot, sorry) discovering that sex hurt when it didn’t used to, was a real blow to my relationship with my body (and romantic interests) – what good was it to have my libido back if I couldn’t use it? My periods have left me exhausted and even grumpier than normal because I’ve become anaemic, and I’ve grown at least one hemorrhagic cyst, though there’s a lot of evidence to suggest there have been a few cysts that have been and gone.

    There are a couple of things people have said to me since I found out I would be going back on the pill that I would like to address. I stand by what I’ve said about hormonal birth control in the past – I think it’s shit. There has to be a better way and I am confident there will be soon – I’m talking to you FemTech engineers. Since I am currently the most single and unsexed I have been since adolescence, my reasons for going on the pill at the moment are not for birth control. I still think the pill is a sorry excuse for birth control, one that has brought about both hugely beneficial social changes and immense personal problems. It is a concept that demands lots of criticism. This time, I am going on the pill to deliberately mess with my menstrual cycle in the hope of getting some relief. It might fix my problems, it might just ease my symptoms for a while, it might do nothing, hell, it could even make things worse, but without having more potentially disappointing surgery, it is my only option for now.

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    The other thing I’ve been asked is “do you think you’ll be paranoid about the negatives of the pill this time round, and therefore never give it a fair chance?” I thought so at first, but I am actually feeling really open minded about it. December was a real toughie pain-wise and anything that offers relief is my friend at the moment – it is worth a shot.

    The last two years and seven months have seen twenty-six cycles – something I know thanks to the wonders of Femtech, particularly Clue. I have gotten to know my body in crazy amounts of detail, which has been both a blessing and a curse. I am really sad to be leaving this period (punny) of time behind, but I am going to try and see it as an opportunity. Since I have been tracking my cycles in great detail all this time, I am really going to be able to see the changes, good and bad, that the pill brings – plus, I get to try out Clue’s pill tracking functions for the first time. See, I’m already seeing the bright side.

    I won’t be starting the pill for a couple of weeks, and I have no doubt that the first few months will be a little wild, but in the mean time I’m going to relish the natural peaks and falls of my hormones and look forward to less-pain in the next few months.

    And to end this long (sorry) love letter to my natural menstrual cycle, I would just like to acknowledge that although I have tracked over 100 days of pain medication consumption during the last year or so, I have also tracked over 200 days of feeling happy, so that’s nice.

    Going on the pill means I will be cutting my trial of Natural Cycles short so my review will be coming sooner than planned. Let me know on Twitter what you would like to hear about my experience with Natural Cycles and I’ll try to fit my responses in. 

  • Is Fertility Awareness a Teched-up Disguise of the Rhythm Method? #Periodically 16

    Is Fertility Awareness a Teched-up Disguise of the Rhythm Method? #Periodically 16

    I first heard the phrase “Rhythm Method” in a Religious Education class at my all-girls catholic high school. It was discussed alongside actual birth control methods like the pill and condoms, and I detected a tone of skepticism in the voice of my teacher. I have a vague memory of dropping the phrase at home one day and my dad going on a “it doesn’t work” rant, which ended, as I recall, with him threatening to demonstrate something involving a banana and a condom…

    So off I pottered on with my life, knowing that the Rhythm Method, which involves using the dates of your previous cycle to forecast the fertile and infertile days of the next, was an unreliable load of rubbish.

    Then something happened. I read an article by Holly Grigg-Spall that talked of Daysy and the Fertility Awareness Method. A year or so later the Natural Cycles phenomenon began. When I first heard about it my family and I agreed that it was the Rhythm Method in disguise, teched-up and glorified anew – it was a dangerous response to the sudden rejection of hormonal contraception that was going to end in a lot of unwanted pregnancies.

    That is until I learnt how the Fertility Awareness Method (FAM) was different from the Rhythm Method. While the Rhythm Method looks retrospectively at past cycle dates, FAM looks for markers of fertility within your current cycle. Tracking Basal Body Temperature (BBT) can flag up the temperature increase that occurs around ovulation. There are other markers too. Getting very familiar with your cervical fluid can be a huge indicator of fertility, testing your urine for luteinizing hormone (LH) even more so.

    I remain very nervous about how FAM is being depicted as this completed project. “Here it is, go forth and only multiply if you want to,” has been the attitude. I think it is still early days and that FAM should be treated as a step in the right direction, not a finite solution to a huge problem. So far in my own experience with FAM I’ve found that I’m less likely to take my BBT reading at the correct time than I was to take the pill on time. It is still super at risk of human error. This is before you consider the fact it can take around six years for a menstrual cycle to get, well, cyclical after menarche and without considering health conditions that can morph FAM data.

    Now a leaked memo from the White House suggests that as effective teen-pregnancy prevention programs (contraception) are being subsidised, abstinence based, sex risk and Fertility Awareness methods are being suggested as alternatives. I think that a big part of what the White House, and supporters of FAM within the Catholic Church, have got wrong, is that the sudden focus on FAM and the recent turn away from hormonal contraceptives is not because we are worried about our consciouses, souls or honour – it’s about wanting more. We want to choose when and if we do or do not have children and we want that choice to be free from the life-changing side-affects that often come with mainstream methods of hormonal birth control. FAM is still birth control. Those using it to avoid pregnancy are still looking for a contraceptive, they are simply asking for more. Having observed the changes in my own body when I was on and off of the pill(s), I am now acutely aware of how my body changes throughout my cycle. If that can stop me getting pregnant (if I could have sex, that is LOL) then of course I’m going to exploit that.

    I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: knowledge of self is powerful.

    This week I attended the opening of Period Piece at the Science Gallery in London. It’s on over the weekend too if you want to check it out, but it was a excellent platform for talking about why Femtech is changing things by using old ideas in new ways. Period Piece is a multi-media art piece that incorporates biometric data, like BBT, while touching upon political and religious events, like the papal ban on the pill in 1968.

  • Gynaecological Whiplash #Periodically 15

    Gynaecological Whiplash #Periodically 15

    I feel like I should start this blog with a “Previously on #Periodically…” but it might just be easier to read Periodically 10, 11 and 12 if you’re new. If you (understandably) can’t be bothered, here’s the gist: in August I had laparoscopic surgery to look for endometriosis, they found nothing but a regular (functional/ovulation) cyst on my right ovary and said there was “no gynaecological cause of pain”. While my belly button took some recovery meanders, I readied myself for my first doctors appointment since moving back to Essex and to look beyond gynaecology (towards bowels and bladder) to find a cause for my pelvic pain. Since then I’ve processed the news and the language issues I was worrying about in Articulating Pain – saying “dementors” instead of pelvic pain has stuck pretty firmly in my vocabulary.

    I must confess, trying to find the words to articulate how confused I am at the moment is proving difficult. Every time I process one fact, something contradicts it and I’m in a new hole of confusion and disillusion. So bear with me. 

    October started with September’s late period and a whole load of nauseating, black-out pain. And it really surprised me. I was surprised because by linguistically and medically disassociating my pain from my menstrual cycle, I think I thought the gynaecological symptoms would disassociate themselves too. Foolish, of course, but that period was a bit of a wake up call.

    Before my first GP appointment I had my symptom spiel ready, I’d checked that my discharge letter from Swansea had transferred and I was ready to start the process once again. Dr C, my new GP, listened to my symptoms, felt my abdomen, read the “no gynaecological cause of pain” letter, then turned to me and said “I am not convinced”. Excuse me? “I am not convinced that it is not gynaecological. You don’t experience painful periods or painful sex unless there is a gynaecological problem”. He ordered an ultrasound and some blood tests and said he would refer me to a gynaecologist.

    I was pissed off. I’d been jokingly forecasting that the doctor was going to refer me to a gyane in this appointment for weeks but I had been joking. I was mad, and my general attitude was “it has taken me 12 months to get to where I am now (which is nowhere) and now we’re going to start all over again from the same place”. Basically, I sulked for a fortnight. Until…

    This week, I headed to the ultrasound with my mum, confused as to why they hadn’t told me to drink a litre of water like last time. The reason I didn’t need any water was because it happened to be an internal ultrasound. Now they had my attention – I’d be moaning for months that it seemed strange to me that I’d never had one of these. While Dr T, who carried out the ultrasound, and the chaperone described the device as a “wet tampon”, I would describe it as a very solid USB dildo that’s plugged into a computer being watched by two doctors and your mum. To my surprise, it hurt almost as much as sex and has left me in the same horrible post-sex pain, but perhaps we now know why.

    I can’t believe I’m writing this. I have a cyst! Two actually, on my right ovary. Yep, what the fuck? Sorry I can’t be more eloquent about this but I am so beyond confused and conflicted at this point that the words in sentence putting is falling out of nick. (What?) One is a small 2cm functional cyst – potentially an ovulation cyst but where I was in my cycle would suggest otherwise. The other cyst however is over 4cm and looks like an hemorrhagic cyst, meaning it has been bled into, which is, get this, potentially an endometrioma or endometrioid cyst. Hmm, those words sound familiar, don’t they?

    Once I had my nickers back on my mum and I expressed our shock upon this discovery to Dr T, explaining the fruitless laparoscopy results just two months earlier. Dr T said: “what and the laparoscopy didn’t find any endometriosis? That’s funny because all your symptoms point towards that”. We all laughed and I went home with the promise that we’ll check to see if the cyst is still there and whether it has grown in six weeks.

    I say laugh but I mean a sort of hysterical confusion and shock induced gurgle. Now, to answer some question my friends have hit me with since the Great Cyst Discovery of October ’17:

    What does this mean? I don’t know.
    Why didn’t they find it in the surgery? I don’t know. It’s possible that it wasn’t there, or that cysts have come and gone and during the lap things just happened to be clear.
    Is this PCOS? I don’t know.
    Is this endometriosis? I don’t know.
    Will they take it out? I don’t know – seems unlikely given my favourite sentence “sometimes you just have to live with it” was uttered during this appointment.
    If they do, would you want to go through surgery (belly button nightmares) all over again? I don’t know.
    Did they actually do anything in the laparoscopy or did they just cut you open, have a cup of tea and then stitch you up (badly)? Maybe. No. A lot of my frustration earlier this week was directed at the surgeons in Swansea, but I know that’s unfair. They knew what they were doing, things must’ve been clear in August. Or maybe the functional cyst they saw was not as functional as they thought.

    I don’t know whether to be mad, happy or upset – I am just very confused. I guess I can say “ovulation pain” rather than “dementors with knives” again now? Plus there’s the fact the whiplash might continue if in six weeks the cyst has disappeared without a trace. I almost begin to get that fuzzy “I’m not imagining it all!” feeling, before I begin to wonder if I imagined the whole surgery in the first place.

    So things are once again painfully up in the air, but for now I am just grateful that despite my obvious doubt, Dr C listened to his gut.

    A bit lost? Don’t blame you. Find the rest of the #Periodically blogs here. Or if it’s a little too TMI for you, I blog about books too here and, finally, last week’s blog can be found here.

    wth